mmusson

Lol. The resume includes expert in Mia Khalifa easter egg.

Power abhors a vacuum.

Another thing is that COBOL records commonly have complicated unions (to save space) where a separate code affects how you interpret the fields. You need to understand all the business logic to make sure you are reading the data correctly.

The missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't...

And if it causes near-universal outrage, what then?

This reminds me of the duct tape X-ray source.

Or worse, pursuing something already proven not to work.

Huh? How do you think `const char s = "Hello"; const char t = &s[1];` works?

I think you and the parent are using different definitions of granularity. The parent meant that sizeof(t) could be 32 or 64 bits. I think you just meant that the smallest thing the pointer references is the address of a single byte.

Rust already has fat pointers though. A reference to a smaller byte value could be a pointer plus a bit-mask.

I think there is a skill issue. Just like in any other pursuit, some people are going to be better at using AI productively. It is a tool. You are still responsible for the quality of the resulting code whatever the mix of human and tool generated.

The thing I find fascinating is that apparently there is a chunk of behavior that we might define as “intelligent” on some level that seems directly encoded in language itself.

The 737 design is like an axe that had its head and handle changed a few times. Is it still the same axe?

From what I have read, John had a genius for what you might call relentless optimization. Even if they just improve the performance or reduce the hardware requirements of executing an already trained LLM that would be a huge win. Current progress in that regard focuses on reducing the fidelity of the LLM to make it easier to execute, which isn’t ideal.

I was pleased that he called his write up on the industrial design for the computer, a case study.

Johnny Fox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Fox_(performer) you are missed.

I remember the doctor explaining that newborns are slippery. All I could imagine was the newborn launching from this contraption with doctor and nurses attempting to catch as the baby slips from person to person while the mother vomits from nausea.

I just saw an article that explains the superconducting diode effect https://phys.org/news/2023-08-ubiquitous-superconductive-dio...

So theres the answer.

How would that work? A diode requires a p-n junction created by doping the substrate. It has low resistance in one direction but ideally infinite resistance in the other direction.

The sweet spot for SO for me is workarounds for esoteric problems, not for more common issues because the solutions tend to be out of date (but correct for an older version of the library or whatever).

The question is what you really believe to be true. If your car hit me and you truly didn’t remember it that way then you are proving the author’s point.

Maybe you do remember hitting me. There will still be innumerable questions that you couldn’t answer because they were out of your perception in the moment. What if it turns out that in hitting me you stopped me from running over an old lady.

Whether or not you learn of that detail will have a big effect on how you remember the accident.

I think the point is that interpretation is all we really have. We believe that memories are these absolute things, but rigorous studies show that no human being remembers things perfectly, even when they believe they do.

For many years as a kid, I knew Santa Claus was real because I had seen him come to my house. My faith was unshakable, because I had observed it with my own eyes. Years later, I found out that on Christmas morning. My dad had left the room changed into the Santa outfit, snuck outside and came to the back door to surprise me with my mom. I was too young to realize that my dad had snuck away and wasn’t there at the same time as Santa.

If we could look back in time and see things just as they were I think it would be disconcerting how many little details we remember wrong that our mind fills in, without us realizing it.

I was a juror on a very small case. A previous trial assigned guilt. Our trial was to determine damages. It was eye opening for me. We were not allowed to know things like medical bills and costs the victim incurred. We were forced to choose some number without having an basis for establishing the magnitude. I still don’t know if we were too high or too low.

I read a short story (don’t remember the author), the gist of which was an a future where time travel is possible and accessible. There was a group tasked with cleaning up time travel mistakes. Their motto was Everyone always tries to kill Hitler. But this leads to a future armageddon so they have to keep undoing it.

It was implied that we would see another Earth. But that is a science fiction trope.

The debt ceiling doesn’t control spending because it is a misnomer. The money has already been spent. The debt ceiling controls whether the government will honor the obligations it has already made.

For certain types of prompts like basic arithmetic that would give ChatGPT trouble, it actually does do a good job coming up with useful questions when prompted. For example, if you ask it the answer to 2 * diameter of the Moon, and then give it a prompt such as what information it would need to answer, it will do a good job breaking down the parts of the problem. So there’s no reason that it couldn’t take some prompt like that and turn around and generate queries to gather those facts in order to create the final answer. In this scenario is really chatting with search engines and things like Wolfram Alpha.

It may be more a question of a new generation of physicists, willing to consider that particle dark matter is not the explanation for the acceleration discrepancy.

It is the old joke. Dev says it is shit. Manager says it is dung. Senior manager says it has a strong odor. Director says it is powerful features. VP smiles in satisfaction.

I do like that the Fields Medal goes to people nearer to the start of their careers than the end like the Nobel awards.

I would be curious about, say, the next five people that didn’t make the cut. Is it common that they still go on to get a Fields Medal?

Also I wonder if there was ever a joint result that led to both authors being awarded a Fields Medal. I can’t find one but strong collaborations are not uncommon, so…

For mean one of the most appealing parts of his comedy is that he is very clear that it is one thing to be insightful and quite another to actually make the better choices. He plays with that dichotomy a lot.

Even here. An essay on the corrupting and addicting influence of fame that basically announces a return to seeking fame.

Some of the famous people just have knack for asking the right questions and then answering them.

I am reminded of a joke that goes something like, if you hit a roadblock in your math problem, the best way to solve it is to get Terry Tao interested in it.